Your message dated Wed, 15 Feb 2006 02:31:57 -0600
with message-id <20060215083157.GH8153@p12n.org>
and subject line Bug#352912: general: Reduce network load using zip packaging and VFS
has caused the attached Bug report to be marked as done.
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Package: general
Severity: wishlist
Here is my plan how to reduce Debian servers load and users Debian packages
download bandwidth:
1. Package in .zip (or a similar format) instead of .tar.{gz,bz2}
2. Implement ZIP filesystem as Linux kernel module.
3. Users could be then able to mount a .zip file from the Debian FTP server
and compile a package directly from the server. This would reduce download
I deem some about 50% compared with current downloading a source package
for compilation, because in this scheme only used files from the source
would be download (no downloading of documentation which is not needed for
compilation of a package, etc.)
Here there is however a complicated issue of what to do with Debian
patches.
Ideally we would also add Linux module for "patched file system" (on the
top of any filesystem, e.g. the above mentioned ZIP filesystem), which
would display files from an other FS with a given patch applied.
A simpler implementation would be to have TWO .zip files for each package
on Debian FTP site: unpatched .zip file (equivalent to .tar.{gz,bz2} as
currently used) and also patched .zip file, which could be usable for above
mentioned compilation directly from the FTP server without downloading.

[Victor Porton]
> Here is my plan how to reduce Debian servers load and users Debian
> packages download bandwidth:
It sounds as though you are concerned with source packages, not binary
packages. Do you have reason to believe that a significant fraction of
Debian archive bandwidth is the source packages? I suspect it's a very
small fraction.
> 3. Users could be then able to mount a .zip file from the Debian FTP
> server and compile a package directly from the server. This would
> reduce download I deem some about 50% compared with current
> downloading a source package for compilation, because in this scheme
> only used files from the source would be download (no downloading of
> documentation which is not needed for compilation of a package, etc.)
Building a package with dpkg-buildpackage or debuild scans the entire
source tree, as well as the .orig.tar.gz, in order to generate the
.diff.gz file. So your hypothetical benefit only accrues to people who
explicitly tell dpkg-buildpackage or debuild *not* to rebuild the
source package.
Speaking for nobody in particular, I highly doubt your approach will
ever be implemented. Acting on nobody else's behalf, I'm closing your
bug. Anyone's free to reopen it if you feel I'm wrong.